Thoughts on the military and military activities of a diverse nature. Free-ranging and eclectic.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Pyotr.

This is coolbert:

"I have lived a long and complicated life, through turbulent, tempestuous, and horrible times." - - P. Grigorenko.

Perhaps one of the more unusual and tragic figures to emerge from the Cold War was the Soviet General officer Pyotr [Peter] Grigorenko.

"a very unusual person"

A man who served with honor and courage during the Great Patriotic War [that is what the Soviets and the Russians call World War Two]. Rose to the rank of Major General.

"Major General of the Red Army"

Had a successful post-war career as well. Was a military theoretician of some significance? On the faculty and was a lecturer at the Frunze Academy.

"Military Science professor"

Became a Soviet dissident/activist in the early 1960's.

"an oppositionist"

This is spite of being among the upper elite of the Soviet hierarchy.

[military officers of general officer rank normally ranked as elitists within the Soviet regime!!]

Was brutally and cruelly treated by Soviet "psychiatrists". Locked up in an insane asylum and subjected to drug treatments designed to break the man physically, mentally, spiritually!

"later jailed in Soviet mental hospitals and eventually exiled to the West"

Was later stripped on all his honors and exiled to the U.S. Much as was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Cannot really be considered to be a "defector". Rather, an exiled dissident. Again, as was Solzhenitsyn.

It seems it was Grigorenko that first [?] proposed the theory that the Red Army under the command of Stalin was poised TO ATTACK WESTERN EUROPE IN JULY OF 1941. An attack that did not transpire, Hitler having struck first!!

"Grigorenko also was one of the first people who questioned the official Soviet version of World War II history. He pointed out that just prior to the German attack on June 22, 1941, vast Soviet troops were concentrated in the area west of Białystok, deep in occupied Poland, getting ready for a surprise offensive, but vulnerable to be encircled in case of surprise German attack. His ideas were later advanced by Viktor Suvorov"

Grigorenko is correct in his appraisal that Stalin intended to attack western Europe in 1941? I would have to think that a man of Grigorenko's rank and caliber would HAVE TO HAD INSIGHTS THAT OTHER PERSONS JUST WOULD NOT HAVE!!